I am an ex military member, published author and now full time researcher of Australia's cryptic hominid.

I have followed your work for some years with great interest.

I am writing to your good self in order to share some interesting data that has come about as result of a three year (thus far) research project I have been compiling on the subject.

In an attempt to answer four very specific questions concerning the existence of the as yet unrecognized bipedal upright cryptid we call "yowie".

Given the vast array of eyewitness reports dating all the way back into prehistory, when one includes aboriginal oral traditions:

1) Why ( as at the current date) is there only volumes’ of anecdotal eyewitness accounts of such an upright bipedal mammal in Australia , yet precious little scientifically testable data to support its stated existence?

Alternately this same question can be rephrased as:

b) What factors have negated, restricted or otherwise encumbered discovery of such testable data? Indeed, could this data void be attributable to the use of incorrect research methodologies and assumptions?

2)Assuming the cryptid is an actual biological species , often described as a primate like creature, what was the creatures route and timeline of entry into Australia, given the well respected Wallace and Satual theories of biological barrier constrictions from Asia?

b) Was there at one time, an alternate means of entry onto the Australian continental landmass that would negate the Wallace and Satul null hypothesis?

If yes to sub question (b)

3) What evolutionary ancestry fits with the suggested upright, bipedal hominid like creatures description, given Australia’s known land based marsupial only, evolutionary history?

Wallace himself suggested the answer to the above question.

" Australian systematic zoology teems with forms exhibiting South American affinities. Curiously enough, many of these forms find their nearest relatives in Chili [Chile].

South America has a host of marsupial species, from the dwarf fat-tailed mouse opossum to the yapok, an aquatic marsupial. Palaeontologists have long wondered, When did the marsupials cross between Australia and the Americas?"

"Recent studies suggest that all or most of Australia's marsupials derive from an order of early North American marsupials of which today just a single representative exists, a sprightly, mouse-sized critter native to southern Chile known as the monito del monte, or "small monkey of the mountains. Both continents had catlike marsupial predators with interesting dentition. The Thylacoleonids which were Australian and had large pronounced incisors which are believed to have replaced the canines that a placental carnivore would have. The Thylacosmilids which had large saber like teeth which differed from the sabre-toothed cats elsewhere in the world due to sheaths that the Thylacosmilds had on their lower jaw."

"Today no monotremes exist outside of Australia (and New Guinea), and no placental mammals that didn't fly or swim there—for example, bats or dugongs—existed in Australia. Why didn't monotremes use the connection to leave Australia? And why didn't placentals use it to enter Australia?"

"Palaeontologists believe that the common ancestor that gave rise to the monito del monte, and the kangaroo and most or all other Australian marsupials, scurried from South America to Australia (through the intervening Antarctica) sometime before about 60 million years ago.

"These facts, taken in conjunction with geological evidence, have led many naturalists to assume a much greater extension of the Antarctic Continent in past times which is supposed to have been connected with South America, Australia, and New Zealand, and possibly, at a very remote period with Madagascar, thus permitting the migration of land and freshwater animals to and from those countries"

Which leaves the assumption that the yowie owes its evolutionary ancestry to primates, not as impossible but certainly as implausible based on the above.

There is a work around to this evolutionary travel conundrum.

4) Could the yowies physical attributes be an example of parallel evolutionary development

similar in form to an upright bipedal primate but is itself a marsupial ?

Some marsupials lack true, permanent pouches as seen in other species. Instead, they form temporary skin folds called "pseudo-pouches, in the mammary region when reproducing.

There are several early "Australian Gorilla" witness reports that describe just such a skin flap on the creature at times .

As reported in The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser On Fri 31 May 1889

By a Mr. J. Higgins of Como whom writes...

"Attached to its back immediately above the tail, there swang a baggy appendage, from which something living protruded, and which we took to be either its young or some animal captured and stored for food".

"...neither ape, nor man, but may be' best described as marsupial man. The so-called hanging stomach seen by Mr Harper wasnt reality the pouch in which it carries Its young, like other marsupials. The black baby when he pokes head out of the pouch is strikingly like an aboriginal child andmuch more human than its grown parent".

So there is at least the suggested possibility of it having a biological connection to marsupials that entered Australia in the same way as every other marsupial, via a land bridge with an ice free and temperate in climate Antarctica, from South America.

This brings a theory I have developed into the present conversation, which provided me with the right platform to make some quite new and remarkable discoveries on the subject of the yowie. These I shall get to in due course.

The seeds of an unexpected and remarkable possibility germinated in my mind.

THE AUSTRLIAN MARSUPIAL CONNECTION WITH SOUTH AMERICA

A POSSIBLE WORKAROUND TO THE WALLACE LINE YOWIE CONUNDRUM.

INTRODUCTION

The Fugian people of Brazil’s Amazonia region, carry distinctive DNA sequences that identify them as the descendants of an earlier wave of colonists known as the Australoids. This Genetic link to the Austaloids is also common in Australian Aboriginals.

One of the most promising places to look for more definitive evidence linking an ancient Australoids population in the Americas with modern Australoid populations in south-east Asia and AustralIa is southernmost South America and the near-extinct indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego known as the Fuegians

One of the most distinctive ancient skulls from the Americas was discovered by a French-Brazilian archaeological team in Vermelho Cave, near Belo Horizonte in south-eastern Brazil in 1973.The skull, that of a young woman dubbed “Luzia”, yielded a radiocarbon age of 10,030 years. Its narrow, oval cranium with a projecting face and lower chin, resembled the skulls of modern Australoid peoples like Australia’s Aborigines, Melanesians, and the various South-east Asian peoples.

All of the above gives a good solid base with which to allow us to theorize that the Australian Yowie as an upright marsupial, may have migrated from South America or an ice fee and tropical Antarctica at some distant point in the past.

So is there any evidence for a similar upright marsupial living in South America at any point?

Indeed there is : The traditionally interpreted Mapinguari creature of the Amazon basin ,complete with a reported "mouth" in its stomach, (which I will immediately suggest is in fact a marsupial pouch rather than a mouth). Alternative suggestions of the creature being a giant sloth, in reality have no basis in fact and indeed are not even supported by eyewitness account of the creature even remotely resembling a giant sloth.

Modern interpretation of oral traditions, along with virtually dismissing the accounts of native people having physical encounters with an upright bipedal creature, featuring a pouch on its frontal torso, have been dismissed by science as mis-identification by the traditional people of the area. This is just the same sort of intellectual arrogance that has dismissed thousands of reports over hundreds of years detailing what we now call the yowie.

From this point I will make direct comparisons between the earliest accounts describing these two creatures as the eyewitnesses themselves have described them. Firstly one must suspend the inclination to imagine either the yowie or the Mapinguari as Sasquatch subspecies, simply because Sasquatch are not marsupials and could not have evolved and migrated from south America to Australia as described in detail above.

The name Mapinguari translates as “roaring animal” or “fetid beast”.

THE MOUTH ON THE CREATURES TORSO AREA:

The only possibility which would explain this characteristic as one which might occur in the natural world, would be if the creature has a pouch for carrying its young. This evolutionary adaptation is only seen in marsupials such as kangaroos, and koala's. Pouches are different amongst different marsupials, two kinds distinguishable (on the front or belly): opening towards the head and extending the cavity under the skin towards the tail (forward, or up) or opening towards the tail and extending towards the front legs (to the rear, backward or down).

THE YOWIE

As reported in The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser On Fri 31 May 1889

By a Mr. J. Higgins of Como whom writes...

"Attached to its back immediately above the tail, there swang a baggy appendage, from which something living protruded, and which we took to be either its young or some animal captured and stored for food".

"...neither ape, nor man, but may be' best described as marsupial man. The so-called hanging stomach seen by Mr Harper wasin reality the pouch in which it carries Its young, like other marsupials. The black baby when he pokeshead out of the pouch is strikingly like an aboriginal child and much more human than its grown parent".

FACT: Some marsupials lack the true, permanent pouches as seen in other species. Instead, they form temporary skin folds called "pseudo-pouches, in the mammary region when reproducing.

THE MAPINGUARI

The Mapinguari is said to have backwards feet.

THE YOWIE

Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal - 1902 reports

“The "Yahoo," (as we all know) is an animal said to resemble a man only that his body is covered with long hair, and his feet are turned backwards, there being where the heel should be."

THE MAPINGUARI

One of the most reliable early sightings was made by Ramón Lista in the late 19th century. While riding in Santa Cruz, he saw a shaggy red-haired creature run across the road ahead of him.He shot at the animal and was amazed that the bullets bounced off its skin.

"...Clifford, who had a 32 Winchester, had his arms at the moment busy working through the bush. As speedily as possible he fired. The animal which, he says, appeared to be 8ft high and 3ft broad, black in color, and covered with hair of great length, gave several un-earthly yells, something like a native bear, and made off. Clifford fired two more shots at it as it fled over a flat".

THE MAPINGUARI

Local people describe the beast as being ferocious, and able to move through the vegetation without making a sound.Other descriptors include long, powerful arms that could tear down a palm tree, and thick, matted fur. The creature is also said to emit a terrifying shriek.

THE YOWIE

Dungog Chronicle : Durham and Gloucester Advertiser Fri 17 Jul 1896

A resident of Tenterfield has reported that he was attacked by a large hairy animal like a gorilla. An armed party have gone out in' pursuit of the creature.

Goulburn Evening Penny Post (NSW ) Sat 28 Aug 1886

"Whilst a young man named Flyn was ooking after stock at the back of the Bredbo station one afternoon last week, he was sur- prised to observe a hairy human form, about seven feet in height, walking in the bush.

The wild man walked with an unsteady, swinging, and fast step, his arms being bent forward and nearly reaching the ground, whilst the colour was described as " bay," be-tween a red and chestnut.

Flynn did not take a second look at the uncanny creature .but rode as fast as he could to the homestead of Mr. Crimmings, nearly two miles away, to whom he reported the strange, mysterious affair.

Since then, Mr. Crimmings himself has interviewed the monster, and his account tallies exactly with that given by Mr. Flynn. But Mr. Crimmings heard the animal make a cry that sounded very like " Yahoo."

We hear that Mr. Joseph Hart, of Jingera, also saw the "Yahoo" as he was returning home one afternoon. The strange being is, no doubt, the "wild man" that has been so often talked of about Jingera for so many years past."

THE MAPINGUARI

The Mapinguaris of local folklore have some disturbing characteristics (possibly exaggerated over the years as the legend grew), including having only one eye.

Its smell is putrid and its skin is seemingly impervious to arrows and bullets.

Another feature of the Mapinguari is that it is believed to be carnivorous, although there are no accounts of it ever eating humans.

They tend to attack cattle, killing them and ripping out their tongues with their sharp claws.

The Mapinguari seems to look like Bigfoot but retains certain sloth-like features.

THE YOWIE

The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser On Fri 31 May 1889

By a Mr. J. Higgins of Como whom writes...

As near as I can describe it,the creature appeared to be fully nine

feet in height; heal large, and resembling that of a baboon, but with a face

more human-like; arms long, black, muscular, and devoid of hair; body

large and round, almost balloon-shaped, legs of extraordinary length, Before disappearing over the summit of the hill, it turned around

and made several hideous grimaces at us, displaying a double tier of long yel

low teeth".

THE MAPINGUARI

In 1975, a miner named Mário Pereira de Souza claimed he saw a Mapinguari at a mining camp along the Rio Jamauchím south of Itaituba, Pará State, Brazil.

He says he heard a scream and turned to see a huge creature advancing towards him on its hind legs. He remembers the creature’s awful stench.

A group of Kanamarí Indians in the Rio Juruá Valley state that they raised two Mapinguaris on bananas and milk. They say they released the creatures after about two years because their stench had become too much to bear. No one seems to know what happened to these Mapinguaris.

In 1994, biologist David Oren spoke to The New York Times about the fact that Amazonians were reporting sightings of Mapinguaris. He organized a trip to the Amazon, however this expedition failed to uncover any evidence.

Discover Magazine ran a story about a Brazilian man who had supposedly encountered a Mapinguari. Manuel Vitorino Pinheiro dos Santos, an experienced hunter, heard a blood-curdling scream while moving through the Amazon. Hiding in a river, Manuel heard the scream a further four times as the creature slowly moved away.

THE YOWIE

The Grenfell Record and Lachlan District Advertiser 1876:

“Leaving one of their young friends to boil the billy and prepare supper. While, so engaged the young women was suddenly startled by observing a man, as she naturally imagined, at first sight, was one of their own party, coming towards the fire, on walking closer, discovered the appearance to be unsightly an inhuman, bearing in every way the shape of a man with a big red face, hands and legs covered all over with long, shaggy hair, from fright she became almost spell-bound, screamed and screeched but unable to run. The men, on hearing such unearthly cries, left their fishing lines and ran with all speed towards their comrade;

She describes the creature:

"The head was covered with dark grisly hair, the face with shaggy darkish hair, the; back and belly and down the legs covered with hair of a lighter colour. This devil-devil or -whatever it may be called doubled round and hurriedly made back towards the fire and woman again.”

What the accounts you have just read demonstrate, is the high degree of morphological and behavioural similarities, involving two distinctly cryptid species, separated by continents, oceans and it’s own evolutionary development timeframe. However as the earliest witness descriptions plainly show minimal differences between the two creatures.

The Mapinguary as it was originally described resembles, what a large upright marsupial should look and act like, that much is clear, but what of the Yowie, now that abundant evidence proves a deep genetic link connecting Australia’s fauna, with that of the South American continent (this would include its traditional peoples via the relic Australoid DNA )?

If the yowie is not an upright marsupial, and as aboriginal tradition dictates, it was in existence on this continent prior to human occupation over 60,000 years ago, how did it get to Australia when no other placental mammals crossed the Wallace line from the North through Asia or neither crossed via a Pangea n land bridge from South America and Antarctica?

There can only be one correct answer from a choice of two possibilities.

1) The yowie is indeed a marsupial cousin to the Mapinguary and migrated to Australia with other monotremes prior to continental separation of Australia from the landmass of Antarctica and South America.

2) The yowie is a species of placental mammal that evolved on the continent of Antarctica when it had an ice free, favourable climate and migrated to Australia prior to continental drift.

Option two is the least likely because no other placental mammals made the same journey into Australia., whilst the genetic exchange between South America and Australia is beyond refute.

When all current data is considered, logic and Occam’s razor would dictate that the Yowie is indeed and upright bipedal marsupial, who’s genetic origins would have been North America and later South America to migrate to what is now Australia via Pangea like landmass.

So in having at at least a testable theory of yowie species point of origin and species radiation to work with I began to compile and study every yowie report on record from Tasmania to the far northern coast of Australia.

After a year and a half of research I had compiled and completed an extremely telling digital pin map that provided me with large and surprisingly numerous clusters of sightings that had a broad and consistent spread of dates indicating a long term and ongoing habitation .in certain areas.

Now I had a potentially plausible species.

A likely point of entry into Australia .

A well researched starting point.

A database of remarkably consistent descriptions spanning hundreds of years .

The completed cluster pin map provided me with a clear date ranged species migratory radiation pattern beginning in the South and spreading to the north .

The cluster map provided me with an optimal, boots on ground, field research location.

The location I ended up selecting was Tivoli in South Eastern Queensland. The area is central to a majority of good reputable and numerous sightings clusters samples and provided a varied selection of good potential yowie habitats without the terrain access rigors presented in places like the Blue Mountains in NSW.

I had success filming a potential yowie in HD from a distance of 500 meters within the first month of arriving here. In fact the footage made print in THE QUEENSLAND TIMES in January of last year and was well received by nearly all independent researchers.

Over the course of time since last January I have published 87 videos denoting habitats that have yielded good results with ground evidence such as footprints, hair samples, tree breaks, primitive structures that are suggestive of ambush hunting blinds , the recording of vocalisations including one example that has all the hallmarks of inter species gluteral communication seemingly in a structured language.

I have developed a fresh methodology which has yeilded remarkable results in a very short space of time, which can be traced directly to information consistencies contained in the witness reports themselves.

I have discarded entrenched methods that have failed in the past, such as trail cameras, team or accompanied ground searches, tree knocking, whooping, scent placing, bate and trap setting along with just about every other known but failed methods.

Instead I went back to putting myself in the circumstances in which almost all yowie reports spring from. A lone person in a well scouted location late at night, with an Infra red capable HD camera.

I have attached video examples of some of the successes I have had for your inspection

Whilst I am well schooled in the very real risks of operating at night in an ambush predators domain, based on current results I am willing to take the risk.

A location in Chuwar I have named "the thicket" has yielded crisp clear and consistent eye shine at night by a specimen of over nine feet in height.

Also unknown to myself at the time of filming, a breif but clear daytime video of a black male yowie a mere twenty feet from my filming position, watching me intently from inside " the thicket" he was accompanied by what to my mind was a female of the species, tan in color, a few feet behind him. I had no idea I was that close until I reviewed the footage, masters of patient observational stealth they clearly are.

Some brief feild observations indicative of consistent behavioral traits, that I have observed in the species, along with environmental changes associated with prolonged yowie presence in given areas.

Peak activity and sighting periods begin in early January and increases as temperatures rise above 30 deg c

The species examples at both Pine Mountain and Chuwar that I have been studying are defiantly and predominantly nocturnal predators, whom will seek out well canopied and ground covered areas, such as thickets and deeply overgrown but dry creeks during these hotter periods, where the day time temperature can be as much as 10 degrees cooler. They are stubbornly reluctant to leave these shaded cool places during the day for any reason as demonstrated by the filming of them at a close proximity of twenty feet. At these times night activity is intensive.

The activity decreases as the temperature drops and tapers off to almost nil activity in the colder months.

They move on from these seasonal areas until the temperature increases again the following year. This is noted in the date range presented in compiled sightings reports and I observed it myself over the limited period of the single seasonal year I have researched the locations.

Yowies seem to affect spider population increases in forested areas by consuming ground species that feed on the spiders and by affecting bird population desertions of the immediate area and surrounds that yowies occupy.

I have documented thousands of large web structures spanning wide and canopy free animal trails , occupied by fat and unusually engorged orb weavers of varying species that have remained in the exposed central portion of the web for days and nights end to end at a time, with no indication of bird predation or web destruction. Birds rather occupy adjacent forestry areas in good numbers where the spider population by comparison is smaller and hard pressed through normal bird and small predator culling.

In general all species populations drop dramatically almost to nothing observable in areas yowies are in residence for extended periods. I can't confirm the cause as predation by Yowies or instinctual relocation by the creatures affected by the very presence of yowies in the area.

This gives some plausible cause for the legendary, often reported as Para natural, forest silence attributed to yowies and reported by witnesses coincidentally visiting yowie preferred summer habitation forest areas at Pine Mountain, Tivoli and Chuwar that I have thus observed.

There is a lot more to discuss, however as this is merely an initial introduction and outreach to your good self.

I will eagerly await your expert commentary when you of course have the spare time in your, Im sure, very busy schedule.

All of my research footage is offered up for any use with no charge or restrictions and can be found and viewed in full simply googling the following keywords

Paul John McLeod

Global Monster

Chasing the grigori

Pine Mountain yowie

Chuwar yowie

Bundamba yowie

Ipswich yowie (which will reveal last years QUEENSLAND TIMES yowie article )

Kindest Regards to you Dr Opit
Thank you for taking the time to read my humble repo

Dear Paul,

Thank you very much for contacting me & outlining your research which I have found of great interest. As far as I know you are the first to link the Yowie with the Mapinguari, which is imaginative & quite possible. I have studied the crypto material extensively over the years & it is very remarkable how many unknown species appear to exist & how few the number of researchers. I have known many researchers for decades and it is good to hear of more people entering the field with fresh ideas. I have not spent a lot of time recently looking at the internet crypto information coming through so have not viewed your material so thank you for the links & I will have a look.

I am very interested in knowing where you obtained the Kiama Independent and Shoalhaven Advertiser 31 May 1889 report, as I do not recall having seen it before. I certainly do not remember reading of Mr. J. Higgins of Como’s statement; "Attached to its back immediately above the tail, there swung a baggy appendage, from which something living protruded, and which we took to be either its young or some animal captured and stored for food".

Nor do I remember reading of the statement in The Sun newspaper on 17 Nov 1912 by Mr. Horace Saxon of Sackville, 'Hawksbury River, describing the creature as...

"...neither ape, nor man, but may be' best described as marsupial man. The so-called hanging stomach seen by Mr Harper wasn’t reality the pouch in which it carries Its young, like other marsupials. The black baby when he pokes head out of the pouch is strikingly like an aboriginal child and much more human than its grown parent".

I regularly receive very interesting reports of an array of unknown species, particularly Yowies. I have been sending the Yowie reports to Tony Healy & Paul Cropper for their new Yowie book & have investigated the more promising reports that take place nearby. As you probably know, there appear to be 3, perhaps even 4 different Yowie-like animal species evidenced from their footprints & sightings. Reports of a metre high species that may be aligned with Homo floresiensis, a 2 to 3 metre high species that may be aligned with Homo erectus, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus or even Gigantopithecus.

Lauren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe have proposed that two unverified species of hominin exist in Australia, Gigantopithecus and an unknown species of ape or Pongid. They have identified the Yowie living along the eastern heavily forested portions of Australia as the unknown Pongid reaching a height of 2 metres and the Jimbra, Tjangara, and Koyoreowen of Western and South Australia and Turramulli from North Queensland as a fully bipedal Gigantopithecus.

Of particular interest to me are the reports & photographs of 3-toed footprints that do not look at all like a primate. I have been very interested for a long time in the thought that there is a possibility that one of the species referred to as a Yowie may indeed be an example of parallel evolution, a marsupial-man, as you have investigated. I received a report of what may be this animal in 2013; Steve Cranny saw a creature that looked to him to be a giant koala-like animal, standing on two legs and leaning against a tree near McPhaills Road & Harmonen Road at Huonbrook behind Mullumbimby, in north-east NSW, where I live at Wooyung / Yelgun. I have also received several Diprotodon-like animal reports, even a family of Diprotodon or bear-like animals with 2 adults & 2 young following. A fossil of a marsupial gorilla or panda, known as the Mountain Diprotodontid (Hulitherium thomasettii) was discovered in Papua New Guinea in 1986 & it weighed around 300kg, had highly mobile limbs, a short muzzle and a domed head. There is a possibility that this is the animal that was killed by Mr. Arthur Marrin as he was going in to Captain's Flat and reported in the Braidwood Dispatch 123 years ago & could also be similar to the Mapinguari.

You mention the deep water channels between the islands of Bali and Lombok, part of the Wallace Line that divides the Australian fauna from the Asian fauna, that has always kept the different faunas apart. Typical Asian animals such as monkeys, squirrels and cats are naturally found in Bali but not further east. Leaf eating langur monkeys have been introduced to Lombok. Many millions of years ago rats and snakes have floated on debris to colonise island and eventually Australia and evolved into many unique species. Elephants also swam across & colonised some of the islands, decreased in size over time and developed into a unique species of now extinct miniature elephant known as Stegadonts.

A very few elephant fossils are known from Australia. Homo erectus is known from fossil evidence and stone tools dated at 900,000 years from the island of Flores. Whether Homo erectus was accidentally dispersed across the intervening channels by being washed out to sea by cyclonic storms or tsunamis and clinging to trees or actually constructed rafts to engage in voyages of discovery is unknown. Because Homo erectus reached the islands north of Australia almost a million years ago it is very likely that our nearest ancestor also reached the Australian continent, although there is no fossil evidence for that.

During the lowest sea levels there is a possibility that hominids such as Homo floresiensis & Homo erectus washed out to sea by cyclonic storms or tsunamis and clinging to trees may have made it to this continent, though one would think that evidence of such would have been found in the fossil record. However, a remarkable discovery has been recently made by Steven & Evan Strong of two entire skeletons with skulls that strongly resemble Homo erectus have been unearthed from a ceremonial burial as reported in the latest Nexus Magazine & there will be a conference on this subject in Brisbane in June 2018, which I hope to attend. I have been slowly rewriting my 2009 book Australian Cryptozoology because of the large number of reports that I have received during that time & recently had published my scientific paper Citizen science & Cryptozoology in the Australian Zoologist that you may have seen on my Facebook page Australian Cryptozoology Gary Opit. Thank you for your photos.

The most important research now is to collect DNA which should be lying everywhere on the ground wherever these animals are living & can probably be collected by using stick tape on footprints & then placing the tape & the soil adhering into a clean plastic bag or jar & filing it away until it can be analysed. Please keep up your research, I was particularly interested in your observations of behaviour during different temperatures, etc.